SIDEBAR: The double helix of dignity

Liberty, equality, and the future of religious freedom

SIDEBAR is my occasional op-ed series on unfolding constitutional controversies. These pieces step outside the usual analysis to weigh in on the news of the moment.

In recent decades, religious liberty cases have become some of the most contested and symbolically charged moments in American constitutional law — flashpoints where faith, identity and pluralism seem to collide. From the baker who refused to design a wedding cake for a same-sex couple to the coach who prayed at the 50-yard line, these conflicts are frequently framed as zero-sum: One group’s freedom is seen as another’s loss.

But what if that framing misses something deeper? What if the key to navigating these tensions lies not in choosing between liberty and equality, but in understanding how the two are fundamentally entwined?

That’s the insight at the heart of a law review article by constitutional scholar Kenji Yoshino, titled “The New Equal Protection.”

Writing in the wake of Lawrence v. Texas — the 2003 case in which the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a Texas law criminalizing same-sex intimacy — Yoshino observed that the court’s reasoning rested not only on liberty but on the indignity such laws imposed. Years before Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), which established same-sex couples’ right to marry, Yoshino saw a new pattern emerging: The court wasn’t simply alternating between liberty and equality — it was often using both, held together by a deeper value. That value was dignity.

Rather than viewing liberty and equality as distinct or even competing constitutional principles, Yoshino proposed that they operate like the two strands of a double helix — intertwined and animated by a commitment to human dignity. Though Yoshino’s analysis focused on cases involving LGBTQ+ rights and racial discrimination, his framework offers a powerful lens for understanding today’s most polarizing legal conflicts, including those over religious liberty.

Religious liberty cases are typically litigated as liberty claims. Plaintiffs argue for the freedom to believe, worship or act in accordance with conscience. But listen more closely and you’ll often hear an undercurrent of something else. These cases are not only about the freedom to act; they’re about the demand to be seen and treated as moral equals; to not be cast as outsiders or bigots in a rapidly changing society. That’s an equality concern. And when the courts recognize it, explicitly or not, they are making a dignity claim.

Take Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission (2018), a case in which the court ruled that a state agency had violated a Christian baker’s rights by showing “clear and impermissible hostility” toward his religious beliefs. The holding was narrow, and it did not resolve the underlying conflict between religious conscience and anti-discrimination law. But the court emphasized that the state had failed to treat the baker’s faith with the “neutrality” the Constitution demands. The real harm, in other words, wasn’t just a restriction on liberty; it was a failure of equal regard.

Or consider Holt v. Hobbs (2015), where the court unanimously sided with a Muslim inmate who wished to grow a half-inch beard in accordance with his faith. The state argued that such a beard posed security risks; the court disagreed, holding that denying the accommodation imposed a substantial burden on the inmate’s religious exercise. But beyond the legal test, the opinion resonated with something more: the sense that his religious identity deserved recognition. The ruling affirmed not just his right to act freely but his right to be treated as a person of conscience. That, too, is dignity in action.

Of course, dignity does not always mean the same thing to everyone. In LGBTQ+ rights cases like Lawrence and Obergefell, dignity is often articulated through the lens of personal authenticity, the right to live openly and equally according to one’s identity and relationships. In the religious liberty context, however, dignity tends to be rooted in moral autonomy, the belief that one must act in accordance with divine command, even when it conflicts with prevailing social norms. The source of dignity, in other words, shifts: It is internally constructed in one context and externally grounded in the other. That distinction is critical to understanding why these cases can feel so fraught. They are not just about clashing rights, but about clashing understandings of what it means to live a dignified life.

This complexity helps explain the emotional charge behind what Yoshino has elsewhere called “pluralism anxiety” — the unease people feel when the recognition of one group’s identity appears to threaten another’s. When the court affirms the dignity of LGBTQ+ individuals, some religious communities experience that affirmation as a denial of their own. When religious claimants prevail, others fear a rollback of civil rights protections. These are not simply legal disagreements; they are moral contests about whose vision of dignity the law will endorse.

Yet it’s precisely here that Yoshino’s framework becomes most powerful. Rather than forcing courts or the public to choose between liberty and equality, it invites us to ask whether we can pursue both — by grounding our legal commitments in a shared recognition of human worth. Instead of framing every case as a win or loss for one identity group, we might consider how law can affirm the dignity of all involved. Can the Constitution protect the couple seeking to marry and the clerk who objects to certifying it? Can it uphold both expressive freedom and equal access?

These are not easy questions. But they are more fruitful than the combative posture that dominates so much of our discourse. And they move us closer to a constitutional culture that resists winner-take-all logic — where disagreement does not mean dehumanization.

Yoshino himself did not extend his dignity-as-double-helix theory to religious liberty, and applying it in that domain requires care. Religion raises unique questions of authority, obedience and communal identity that cannot be mapped neatly onto frameworks built around individual autonomy. But if dignity is to mean anything in pluralistic democracy, it must stretch to include those whose deepest commitments are shaped not by self-expression but by submission to a higher power.

As the court continues to wrestle with questions at the intersection of identity, belief and public obligation, it’s worth remembering that liberty and equality are not isolated guarantees. They are entwined, each incomplete without the other. And what binds them — what gives them meaning in a divided and diverse society — is dignity: the recognition that every person, regardless of creed or conviction, is worthy of being seen, heard and treated as fully human.

In an age of division, dignity may be the Constitution’s most radical idea. And also its most necessary.

This piece was previously published at Deseret News.